“Most of what I know about him came from books,” I said. “A lot of different cases, a lot of different women. But there are a few memories that aren’t in books and are just mine. I remember coming into the office he had set up at home when he started to get sick. There was a painting framed on the wall — a print actually, but back then I thought it was a real painting. The Garden of Earthly Delights. Weird, scary stuff for a little kid …

“The memory I have is of him holding me on his lap and making me look at the painting and telling me that it wasn’t scary. That it was beautiful. He tried to teach me to say the painter’s name. Hieronymus Bosch. Rhymes with ‘anonymous,’ he told me. Only back then, I don’t think I could say ‘anonymous’ either.”

I wasn’t seeing the city out there. I was seeing the memory. I was quiet for a while after that. It was my half brother’s turn. Eventually, he leaned his elbows down on the railing and spoke.

“I remember that house,” he said. “I visited him once. Introduced myself. He was on the bed. He was dying.”

“What did you say to him?”

“I just told him I’d made it through. That’s all. There wasn’t really anything else to say.”

Like right now, I thought. What was there to say? Somehow, my thoughts jumped to my own shattered family. I had little contact with the siblings I knew I had, let alone Bosch. And then there was my daughter, whom I saw only eight days a month. It seemed like the most important things in life were the easiest to break apart.

“You’ve known all these years,” I finally said. “Why didn’t you ever make contact? I have another half brother and three half sisters. They’re yours, too, you know.”

Bosch didn’t say anything at first, then he gave an answer I guessed he had been telling himself for a few decades.

“I don’t know. I guess I didn’t want to rock anybody’s boat. Most of the time people don’t like surprises. Not like this.”

For a moment I wondered what my life would’ve been like if I had known about Bosch. Maybe I would’ve been a cop instead of a lawyer. Who knows?

“I’m quitting, you know.”

I wasn’t sure why I had said it.

“Quitting what?”

“My job. The law. You could say the brass verdict was my last verdict.”

“I quit once. It didn’t take. I came back.”

“We’ll see.”